The present invention relates to a refrigeration system, and especially to a refrigeration system designed to operate with energy supplied by heated fluids driving a refrigerant motor to operate a compressor.
In the past, it has been common to provide a great variety of refrigeration systems, especially for use in air-conditioning. These systems typically have a compressor to compress and liquefy the refrigerant in a condenser. The compressed refrigerant can be fed to an evaporator where a reduction in the pressure allows the refrigerant gas to expand into a gas thereby cooling an evaporator coil which can have air or other fluids blown thereby having heat removed therefrom to a space to be cooled. The evaporator feeds the expanded refrigerant back through the compressor. Compressors are normally electrically driven or belt driven by internal combustion engines but other types of cooling systems, such as obsorption systems, are also used in air conditioning.
The present system operates as a conventional air-conditioner or heat pump system having a compressor for compressing a refrigerant and connected to a condenser to liquefy the refrigerant from the compressor and having an evaporator connected to the compressor for receiving and expanding the refrigerant from the compressor for cooling an evaporator coil. The compressor in the present case is a refrigerant motor which may be an integral compressor and refrigerant reciprocating motor or alternatively a combined rotor refrigerant motor and compressor. A heat exchanger is used to collect heat from a heat source, such as wasted heat from a vehicle engine, into a refrigerant system for operating the refrigerant motor. The refrigerant motor can utilize the same condenser as that used by the compressor for liquefying the refrigerant for the refrigerant motor. Typical prior art patents dealing with refrigeration systems, include the Wood U.S. Pat. No. 2,986,898 for a Refrigeration system with a refrigerant operated pump and the Smeal U.S. Pat. No. 4,483,154 for a refrigerated air-conditioning system using a diaphram pump. This latter patent uses a dual refrigerating system in which a refrigerant diaphram pump drives a diaphram compressor for operating the refrigerant system. In addition to these patents, there have been numerous free piston type sterling engines working on external combustion sources for driving the engine pistons. There have also been a wide variety of rotary pumps and compressors as well as automobile engines which utilize an internal combustion engine's waste heat to perform a useful function. A rotary sterling engine can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,492,818 while patents using waste heat from an automobile engine can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,948,235 and in U.S. Pat. No. 2,737,014.